I am probably just being paranoid. I have a portable hard drive. It's a WD My Passport. Several months ago, I backed up all my files on it, and stored it off site. I retrieved it the other day, and tried to connect it. It's dead. It's still under warranty. WD wants me to send it back so I can get a new one. Since I cannot connect to it, I can't delete what is (was) on it.

I don't like the idea of someone possibly being able to get data off the drive, but I want a free replacement. What steps can I take to remove the data? I've thought of dropping the thing a few times, or putting some magnets right on it.

If it is possible to open the case without breaking any warranty seals, I'd open it up and make sure the drive is still attached to the internal cabling. If not, you either send it back to WD and risk your data, or you eat it. The dead drive, not the data. And figuratively, not literally...dont' need you getting sick. I just threw away a bunch of old IDE drives. Some dead, some not. They are worth nothing on EBay. I put them on the concrete floor in the garage, gave my 3yo son a BFH and let him go to town.

The magnet is unlikely to do anything - it's too far away from the platters to have a strong enough field to flip any bits.

OP, the only way to really be sure about a dead drive is to physically destroy it. Obviously, WD isn't going to take it back like that, so you have to decide whether or not the free replacement is worth the risk. The risk of somebody looking at your data is miniscule, though you might want to destroy the drive is you have something really serious on there (like evidence of a felony or something).

That's not to say that magnets *wont* do anything, just that your typical fridge magnet isn't strong enough to do anything. You'd need something considerably more powerful to truly wipe the drive.

What we do at work where we have to stay HIPAA compliant is pop it in an old system and run DBAN on it assuming the heads arent totally fudged and it actually still kinda works. If that doesnt work because the drive is physically broken, we get out the drill, take it out back, and drill a bunch of holes right through it.

Even drives still under warranty get shipped *nowhere*, but sometimes following strict regulations means eating the extra cost of voiding the warranty. That being said, I seriously doubt anyone at the WD plant you ship your dead drive to is taking drives home and doing serious data recovery on them. Even if it gets refurbed they need to reformat the drives so they are "clean" when they get resold.

I am probably just being paranoid. I have a portable hard drive. It's a WD My Passport. Several months ago, I backed up all my files on it, and stored it off site. I retrieved it the other day, and tried to connect it. It's dead. It's still under warranty. WD wants me to send it back so I can get a new one. Since I cannot connect to it, I can't delete what is (was) on it.

I don't like the idea of someone possibly being able to get data off the drive, but I want a free replacement. What steps can I take to remove the data? I've thought of dropping the thing a few times, or putting some magnets right on it.